From Texas, I mostly cover the energy industry and the tycoons who control it. I joined Forbes in 1999 and moved from New York to Houston in 2004. The subjects of my Forbes cover stories have included T. Boone Pickens, Harold Hamm, Aubrey McClendon, Michael Dell, Ross Perot, Exxon, Chevron, Saudi Aramco and more. Follow me on twitter @chrishelman.

Sandy has killed at least 39 people across eight states, has left more than 8 million without power, and has absolutely crippled the mass transit system that the nation’s biggest city relies upon to function, with many subway tunnels flooded.

“The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as last night,” said Joe Lhota, chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, this morning.

This super storm will certainly go down as one of the greatest ever to hit the United States, with damage amounts well in excess of Irene’s $10 billion hit in 2011. EQUECAT has estimated that the damage will be on the order of $20 billion, which would put it in the neighborhood of Hurricane Ike, which struck Texas in 2008. Insured losses will likely be more than $7 billion.

Depending on the cost of repairing New York’s subways, it’s possible that Sandy could edge out 1992′s Hurricane Andrew at around $30 billion. The hit from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is estimated at $100 billion. (See list of the 10 worst U.S. storms, here.)

“I think the losses are going to be almost incalculable,” said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. “We are in the midst of search and rescue missions.” Thousands of New Jersey homes have been damaged; hundreds of feet of the Atlantic City boardwalk was destroyed, and fires raged overnight in Ocean County. In Moonachie, New Jersey, 10 miles northwest of Manhattan, a storm-weakened levy on the Hackensack River broke this morning, pouring five feet of water into the town of 2,700, forcing many to climb to their roofs. One man rescued from near the Teterboro airport told a reporter, “It was like an ocean all around,” he said. “That place always gets flooded, but this time was the worst because the level of the water reached the floor of my trailer.”

But the most dramatic damage reports are coming out of New York City. Last night, at the height of the storm, backup power failed at NYU Langone Medical Center, prompting an emergency evacuation of patients in the middle of the night. According to this excellent on-the-scene report from CBS‘s Dana Bass, four premature infants with breathing tubes were swaddled in blankets and carried out of the hospital by nurses who ventilated them by hand.

In Queens, as many as 100 homes were destroyed in a great, wind-fanned fire despite the efforts of 190 firefighters. By one account, some rescued residents of the neighborhood had been trapped in their homes between thigh-deep floodwaters and flaming roofs.

A giant electrical transformer station on East 14th Street exploded last night in a blue-white fireball — knocking out power to most of lower Manhattan (including Forbes headquarters).

The worst damage in the Big Apple has come from the 13-foot storm surge that swamped the Battery and dozens of blocks from the South Street Seaport through the Lower East Side and into Alphabet City. The foundations of the new World Trade Center were flooded. The surge washed over Fire Island, off the south shore of Long Island, destroying homes and docks and leaving 60 people trapped.

In the realization of a nightmare scenario, the surge waters poured into subway tunnels. The Brooklyn-Battery tunnel was inundated as were seven tunnels under the East River and the Holland Tunnel connecting Manhattan to New Jersey. Pictures taken Monday night showed subway stations flooded above platforms throughout Manhattan.

The Metropolitan Transist Authority said there was no time table for getting the subways back in action. Late Monday the head of the MTA said subway service would be down for at least a week.

Just getting the water out of the system will take days of pumping, then workers will have to inspect every inch of the system for damage. The subway system is accustomed to pumping out groundwater and rainwater — dealing with 13 million gallons even on dry days. But these floodwaters are saltwater, from the ocean, which is far more corrosive to electronic gear and to metal, and could be especially damaging to decades-old subway equipment.

The damage is felt far beyond. In North Carolina, a replica of the tall ship HMS Bounty sunk yesterday after being battered by Sandy’s winds and waves. Captain Robin Walbridge went down with the ship and is presumed dead. The Coast Guard rescued 14 other crewmembers from the ship, which has featured in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. One other crewmember, Claudene Christian, was pulled from the sea, but died. (Some amazing pics of the sinking here.)

In Howard County, Maryland, the power outage at a water treatment plant has caused a massive sewage leak, with 2 million gallons of human waste pouring toward the Little Patuxent River every hour. (Power was returned to the plant at midday Tuesday.)

Speaking of gross, one concern on the minds of New Yorkers is what happens to all rats when the subway floods? Rats are good swimmers, at least in calm waters, so many of the millions of vermin are likely to have escaped the waters and scurried to the safety of buildings. One possible upside: it might be the case that the biggest, meanest, dominant rats live deeper down in the subways tunnels, and so may have drowned in the flooding. At least that’s according to tweets from Bora Zivkovic (@boraz), who writes for Scientific American. “Many will drown. Bloated carcasses will float to the top. They can swim, but not dive through pipes, upwards, in rough water,” he wrote, citing a book called “Rats.”

Among the damage reports came some hoaxes. As the storm slammed New York, CNN reported that the main trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange was under three feet of water — quickly proven untrue. There were also false reports of a fire at a hospital in Coney Island.

One story blown way out of proportion concerned an alert issued at Exelon’s Oyster Creek nuclear power plant. As surge waters rose 6.5 feet above normal, the plant sent out an alert that its water pumps might not be able to handle the deluge. No worry, though; Oyster Creek has been offline for maintenance, and the alert was made based on weather conditions, not because of any dangerous condition. Other nuclear plants were either taken offline during the storm, or taken down to reduced generation rates — with so many power outages there was no way to put their juice into the grid.

Keeping order in the days to come will be a challenge for authorities from Virginia to Michigan. Yesterday some knuckle-heads on Twitter were advertising their intentions to do some looting in Sandy’s wake. @Call_Me_WORM tweeted: “Bout to do some looting when this hurricane finally hits … gonna get a new laptop and TV … this hurricane might be the best thing to happen.”

That’s the can-do spirit!

No matter what the total damage bill comes to, it’s far from insurmountable. Together, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Connecticut have an annual GDP of $2.7 trillion, representing about 20% of U.S. GDP. Even $30 billion in damages comes to “just” 1% of that. And if rebuilding is done right, New York City will end up like New Orleans — with stronger fortifications ready to withstand the next Big One.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

As the effort to bring everything back to ‘normal’ gets under way, we might be deluding ourselves once again as to the extent of what we are taking on here. To put things right, we will pump out water, fight fires, shift debris, feed people, tend the injured—all necessary stuff, but to do that we will have to burn fuel. And this time we will overcome disaster, because we have sufficient fuel to fight the forces of chaos. Things will get back to normal, and the mating calls of the hoax-merchants will be heard once more across the land as the rain stops and the skies clear. But we all know the winds will be back. And we will have to burn more fuel to resist the forces of chaos again. And again. And again. This time the damage is put at $20bn, how much next time? We have created the chaos of our environment by burning fuel, now we have no choice but to burn more fuel to combat it. The cities battered by hurricane Sandy were built with hydrocarbon energy, and we have to burn more of it to prevent them being pounded out of existence. If you think that concept is too extreme, this time it’s going to take up to two weeks to get the power back on. We only have so much resource available to fix things, and our energy supplies are in decline; whereas Nature’s power is literally unlimited. When we reach the point where we no longer have the means to ‘fix things’, whatever nature knocks down will stay down. This is the struggle we face, it’s more than fixing a few power lines so the lights in Wall Street can come back on. Any bets on the ultimate winner in all this?

I bet you drive a car yourself. How dare you blame this on cars. The cars we drive today effect nothing in the worlds environment. I am old enough to remember smog. Do you remember smog?

You killed off the American Peoples real freedom & wealth. Don’t you dare even think about blaming this on us driving now. You environmental extremists have gotten EVERYTHING THAT YOU HAVE EVER ASKED FOR! You have destroyed most of Americas’ ability to create viability & wealth. Everything that we do is die so that people like you can destroy us more. Some little fish, some bird can kill an entire industry dead & you don’t care, you always want more. More money, more power, more ability to destroy us. & you people drive bigger cars than we do. You go around in your huge trucks & blame everything on us. We will rebuild this nation. & we will take it back from you.

There is no proof that driving cars is creating “global warming”. However, there is massive amounts of proof that environmental extremists have killed industries, national viability & the ability to create wealth. You need to sit down & shut up.

& we will destroy you very soon. We must if we want to live again. You have no idea what we put up with, how much you’ve killed. We know. Some day soon America will fight back & win against you.

Give us liberty or give us more liberty. Power to the power to the infinity. You tyrants are going down!

I didn’t see any mention of cars, specifically. Are you the same person who is lamenting “the nation that America used to be before we all hated each other”? Because I’m having trouble reconciling that with the person who says “we will destroy you very soon.” Tell me, whose comments here sound hateful?

People around the world remember the nation that America used to be before we all hated each other so much that we couldn’t stand next to each other to help any one anymore. Can any one remember America, the kindhearted?

We always used to all join in when these things happened, to help where we could. It is the only thing that makes any thing better when these things occur. & now, we can not loosen the grip on our wallets or our hearts.

Other nations notice, I wonder when we will. America is a nation who forgot how to live. Giving is power, & America is a nation of weaklings.

I’m making $86 an hour working from home. I was shocked when my neighbour told me she was averaging $95 but I see how it works now. I feel so much freedom now that I’m my own boss. This is what I do, Max14.comCHECK IT OUT

In about 1 billion U.S. dollars, the technology can be implemented to prevent damage. It is a large but simple technology – spraying seawater into the hurricane. I am the author of U.S. Patent 7798419 (Method of and a device for the reduction of tropical cyclones destructive force)